The Orphan Collector

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

  Mutti threw her hands up in exasperation, then started down the hall toward the back of the building. “Come help with the water, bitte,” she said, too upset to realize she was speaking German again. “The twins will wake up again soon.”

  Pia followed her mother down the hall, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the deepening gloom. Except for the front apartments on each floor, which had the only windows in the building, the hallways and the rest of the rooms were shrouded in darkness, even in the middle of the day. She tried not to think about their little shack back in Hazleton, with windows on three walls to let in the sunshine and mountain breezes. Thankfully, though, her family lived in one of the front apartments, with a window in the main room to let in natural light. She couldn’t imagine what it was like living in the back and middle of the row house, where the only light came from candles or lanterns. Not to mention no fresh air to ward off the flu. With that thought, frightening images formed in her mind of the people in the back apartments, sick and dying in the dark, where no one would find them for days.

  Clenching her jaw, she pushed the gruesome thoughts away and followed Mutti through the back door and outside, into the fenced backyard that housed the water pump and outhouse. Mutti picked up one of two buckets and put it beneath the cast-iron spout. Pia set her books on the back step and pumped the handle, grateful to be getting water now instead of being sent to fetch it after supper. She hated coming down to the backyard alone, especially to use the outhouse. Sharing outhouses and water pumps with other families was nothing new—they had done it in the mining village—but the fences and closeness of the surrounding buildings made her feel like a pig in a pen, vulnerable to whomever else was in there at the same time. Like Mrs. Nagy, who kept asking questions in Hungarian, then stared at her waiting for an answer, as if Pia could speak the language. And especially old Mr. Hill, who rattled the outhouse handle when it was occupied and started pulling down his pants before shutting the door when it was his turn. Sometimes he talked to her until she came out of the outhouse, then grinned like they were best friends. He always shook his head and chuckled, making excuses about being old and senile, but she could see the cunning in his eyes. He knew exactly what he was doing.

  When they finished filling the two buckets, Pia picked up her books and helped Mutti carry the water inside, down the shadowy hallway and up the narrow stairs, their hard-soled shoes crunching on dirt and plaster. What seemed like a hundred thick odors layered the floors of the row house—boiled cabbage, fried potatoes, warm curry, simmered tomatoes, sautéed sausage, roasted garlic, baked bread—each one more fragrant than the one before. Despite her fear and unease, Pia’s stomach growled with hunger. It had been over six hours since her breakfast of rye bread and hot tea, and there hadn’t been enough food to pack a lunch.

  On the third floor, Mrs. Ferrelli was outside her door, tying a piece of black crepe to the handle, her face red, her cheeks wet with tears. Dark streaks and maroon blotches stained the front of her yellow dress, striping the swell of her pregnant belly.

  No, Pia thought. Not Mr. Ferrelli. He was too young and too strong, a broad-shouldered brick mason who filled the halls with laughter and had been hoping to see the birth of his first child before reporting for the draft. Not to mention he and his wife were one of their few English-speaking neighbors who weren’t afraid to be friends with Germans. How could the flu kill someone like him?

  Mutti came to a halt and Pia stopped beside her, not knowing what to do or say. The bucket handle dug into her fingers. She felt awful for Mrs. Ferrelli and her baby, but more than anything, she wanted to keep going, to get to the safety of their rooms.

  “I’m very sorry for you,” Mutti said.

  “I’m sorry too,” Pia said.

  Mrs. Ferrelli murmured a quiet thank you.

  “Was it flu?” Mutti said.

  Mrs. Ferrelli nodded, her face contorting with grief, then hurried back inside.

  Mutti glanced at Pia with tears in her eyes.

  “Did you know he was sick?” Pia said.

  Mutti shook her head, her free hand scrubbing her apron, then rushed up the last flight of stairs. Pia followed her up the steps, across the hall, and inside their apartment, closing the door behind them. At last, she was home. The dark-walled space consisted of two rooms—a combination kitchen/living room, and a windowless bedroom no bigger than the chicken coop they’d had back in the mining village. An oil lantern cast a dim light over the necessities of life that filled every square inch of space. Rough-hewn shelves lined with graying eyelet doilies held a crock of silverware, a stack of white plates, baking tins, a mismatched assortment of cups and glasses, baby bottles, a clay pitcher, and a mantel clock. Frying pans hung from hooks above a narrow wooden table with three mismatched chairs that had been repaired and strengthened with twine and pieces of wood. Baskets, a metal tub, and empty pails sat stacked beneath the table, along with a bucket of cleaning rags and a short broom. Across from the table, a chipped enamel teakettle and matching pot sat simmering on a coal stove with a crooked pipe that leaked smoke at every joint. A cloth calendar hung on the wall above a metal washbasin sitting on wooden crates, and clean diapers hung from clotheslines strung across the ceiling. The only decorations were a blue bud vase and a faded embroidered tablecloth that had belonged to Pia’s late oma. To the left of the stove, Pia’s narrow bed sat beneath the only window, lengthwise along a wall covered with newspapers to keep out the cold. Drapes made out of flour sacks fluttered above the peeling sill.

  Remembering how crowded it had been when they’d shared the rooms with her paternal aunt and uncle for ten months after they arrived in Philadelphia—Mutti and Vater on the narrow kitchen bed, Pia sleeping on the floor—she knew how lucky she was to have an entire bed to herself. Eventually her luck would change, either when the landlord found out her aunt and uncle had moved to New York and he needed room for more tenants, or when the twins got too big to sleep with Mutti. But for now, she relished being able to stretch out and turn over on the horsehair mattress.

  Thinking about it now, she couldn’t wait to go to bed later. Exhaustion weighed her down, making her lungs and limbs feel heavy and slow, every thought and movement an effort. She couldn’t wait to eat, then escape into sleep, so she could stop thinking about the little girl who grabbed her hand during the parade, and Mary Helen and Tommy Costa, Mr. Ferrelli, and the man in the trolley. She wanted to stop thinking about the trolley man’s bloody face, and the flu, and the horrible things happening in the city, and in this very building. It was too much. Then she remembered Finn’s brother and prayed he wasn’t sick too, even though in her heart of hearts she knew the truth. Hopefully Finn would send her a note saying she was wrong, if she heard from him at all.

  After setting her water bucket next to Mutti’s near the washbasin, Pia put her books on her bed, the familiar aroma of vinegar, boiled potatoes, and the sharp tang of lye soap wrapping her in an invisible cocoon of home and safety. She wanted to close the window to keep the comforting smells in and whatever was happening in the city out. It made no sense, of course—fresh air was supposed to ward off influenza—but the urge to shut out the disease and fear-filled air everyone else was breathing outweighed any common sense. She knelt on the bed and put her hands on the sash, ready to pull it down.

  “What are you doing?” Mutti said.

  “It’s chilly in here,” Pia said. “May I close the window?”

  “We will shut it when the boys wake up,” Mutti said. “The fresh air is good. We need to keep it open when they are sleeping.” She went over to the table, picked up a spoon, and held it out to Pia. “Mrs. Schmidt brought this over. To keep away the flu.”

  Before getting off the bed, Pia glanced over at Finn’s window. It was open, but no one looked out. She got down and went over to her mother. “What is it?”

  “A sugar cube soaking in...” Mutti furrowed her brow. “I cannot think of the wor
d. Kar . . . karo . . .”

  “Kerosene?”

  Mutti nodded. “Ja. I took one and gave one to the boys too, with a little water. This is for you.”

  Pia made a face. Back in Hazleton, they ate violets and drank sassafras tea to keep sickness away, not kerosene. But no violets or sassafras trees grew in the Fifth Ward, or anywhere in the city as far as she knew. Knowing she had no choice, she took the spoon and put the sugar cube in her mouth. It tasted sweet and oily at the same time, as if she were eating a piece of candy rolled in tar. Trying not to gag, she chewed and swallowed as fast as she could. Mutti gave her a ladle of water from the bucket, but it didn’t help. The inside of her mouth tasted like mud and lantern oil. She grimaced and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

  “That was awful,” she cried.

  Mutti put a finger to her lips. “Shh, don’t wake your brothers. They have not been happy all day.” She took the spoon and put it in the washbasin, then sat down at the table and picked up a darning egg from her mending basket.

  “They probably didn’t like the medicine,” Pia said.

  “Medicine is not meant to taste good,” Mutti said.

  Hoping supper would get rid of the horrible taste in her mouth, Pia went over to the coal stove and lifted the lid on the simmering pot. Potato soup. Again. Due to the war, they were supposed to sacrifice by having wheatless Wednesdays and meatless Mondays, but she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had meat at all. Maybe it was Easter, or Christmas. Vater had tacked the newspaper articles on the wall before he left, to remind them to keep sacrificing while he was gone. As if they had a choice.

  If you eat—THESE—you eat no wheat/CONTAINS NO WHEAT:

  Oatmeal, potatoes, rice, hominy, barley, and 100 percent substitute bread.

  100 percent breads:

  Corn pone, muffins, and biscuits, all kinds of bread made only from corn, oats, barley, and all other wheat substitutes.

  Don’t waste ice. Don’t waste ammonia.

  A ton of ice waived may mean one pound of ammonia saved. One pound of ammonia saved may mean twenty hand grenades. Twenty hand grenades may win a battle.

  Potatoes are a splendid food. Excellent for your body. Delicious when well cooked.

  What they do for your body: They are good fuel. They furnish starch, which burns in your muscles to let you work, much as the gasoline burns in an automobile engine to make it go. One medium-size potato gives you as much starch as two slices of bread. When you have potatoes for a meal, you need less bread. Potatoes can save wheat. They give you salts like other vegetables. You need the salts to build and renew all the parts of your body and keep it in order. You can even use potatoes in cake!

  If only we could get muffins and biscuits and meat, Pia thought. She glanced at her mother, who was picking up a tattered sock and scrubbing one hand on her apron. Her flour-sack blouse hung loose on her shoulders, exposing her thin neck and jutting collarbones, and her brown skirt hung like a faded tent over her legs. Her jawline and cheekbones stood out in sharp angles in her pale face, and her waist-length blond hair, which Pia used to love to brush and Mutti now wore in a loose braid, looked limp and dull. Pia wasn’t sure how much longer her mother could keep nursing the twins without eating more, but Mutti refused to spend what little money they had on formula when she could feed her babies for free, and she didn’t want to use the jars of Mellin’s Infant Food on the shelf until absolutely necessary, even though doctors said Mellin’s mixed with cow’s milk was superior to mother’s milk. But they only had water to mix it with, anyway.

  Pia wanted to look for a job to bring in more money, but Mutti hoped the war would be over soon, Vater would return, and things would go back to normal. In the meantime, Pia was only thirteen and needed to stay in school as long as possible, especially because the laws for Germans seemed to change every day, and there was no way of knowing how much longer she’d be allowed to attend. Finn had offered to teach her how to steal food at the open-air market, but she refused. Mutti would never eat stolen food, not to mention the trouble she’d be in if she got caught. The first time she saw Finn stuff a brisket under his jacket, she’d been shocked—and asked him afterward how taking meat was any different from robbing bottles and rags from the old colored woman. He said the boys who did that were trying to cause trouble by stealing from someone who already had nothing, but he was trying to help his family survive. Like him and everyone else unlucky enough to live in the Fifth Ward, she’d been dealt an unpredictable lot in life, he said, and someday she might need to slip a loaf of bread beneath her shirt to stay alive. Having been taught that taking something that didn’t belong to her was wrong, no matter what, she hadn’t been convinced. But she had to admit she was beginning to understand. Desperation was a powerful thing. Now she wished she’d listened to him. She supposed she could still try stealing if things got any worse; then she remembered she was too scared to leave the house.

  “Did you go to the market this morning?” she asked her mother.

  Mutti shook her head. “I was waiting for you to stay with the boys. Then Mrs. Schmidt told me everything was closing and I should stay home.”

  Just then, one of the twins started crying in the other room. Mutti sighed and pushed herself up from her chair, her hands on her knees, her face contorting in pain.

  “What’s wrong?” Pia said. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  Mutti shook her head. “Nein, I am only getting old.”

  Pia frowned. At thirty-two, Mutti wasn’t that old. “Stay there,” she said. “I’ll get the boys.”

  Her mother sat back down and sighed. “Danke.”

  Opening the door a crack, Pia peeked inside the bedroom. Maybe whoever was crying would fall back asleep. The lantern light from the kitchen fell over a wooden washstand, a dresser with mismatched handles and crooked drawers, and her parents’ rusty iron bed filling half the room. Near the head of the bed, a floor-level cubby and open closet took up one wall. The twins lay on the bedcovers in cotton gowns and day caps, their rattles and swaddling blankets on the floor. One was on his back with the toes of his foot in his mouth, the other on his stomach, red-faced and howling. Their names were Oliver and Maxwell, Ollie and Max for short—good American names, according to Mutti, who wanted Pia to change her name to Polly or Peg after the war started. But Pia liked being named after her great-grandmother, even though some of her schoolmates used it as another reason to pick on her, and in the end, Vater said she could keep it. Max was the one howling.

  She entered the bedroom, lit the lantern on the dresser, picked up the rattles and blankets, and stood by the bed, waiting to see what the twins would do when they saw her. Max noticed her first. He stopped crying and gave her a teary-eyed grin, his drool-covered lips still quivering. She wrapped one of the blankets around him, scooped him up, and sat on the edge of the bed, cradling him in one arm. He grabbed a handful of her hair, and Ollie cooed up at her from the bed, then stuck his toes back in his mouth. Then she remembered something and stiffened. What if she felt something strange when she held her brothers? What if her chest hurt or her lungs burned? Touching family had never troubled her before, but that was before the parade and the flu, before Mary Helen and Tommy Costa. She took Max’s tiny hand in hers, held her breath, and waited. To her relief, she felt nothing but his warm body against hers, and the silky soft skin of his little fingers and palm. She exhaled, her breath shuddering in her chest, and wiped the tears from his face.

  “What’s the matter, little one?” she said in a soft, singsong voice. “Did you think we left you home all alone? Don’t you know we’d never do that?” She kissed his forehead. “Never, ever, ever.”

  Max grinned up at her again, bubbles of spit forming between his lips.

  Unlike everyone else, she could always tell her brothers apart. Even Vater joked about hanging numbers around their necks so he would know who was who. Looking at their white-blond hair and cobalt blue eyes—traits inherited from Mutti—it would be e
asy to get them confused. But Pia knew Max’s face was the slightest bit thinner than Ollie’s, his button nose a tad flatter on the end. His dimples were deeper too.

  She’d never forget the day four months ago when the twins were born, the tense minutes after Ollie’s appearance when Mutti continued to groan and hold her still-bulging stomach. Vater sent Pia to get Mrs. Schmidt, but by the time she returned, a second baby had arrived, much to everyone’s surprise. Mrs. Schmidt, holding a jar of lard to “lubricate the parts of passage,” seemed unfazed.

  “I knew you were having more than one when you said the kicking felt like the baby was wearing hobnailed boots,” she said proudly.

  While Mrs. Schmidt helped Mutti remove her soiled skirt and get cleaned up, Pia swaddled the newborn twins and studied their tiny faces, grateful and amazed to finally have two brand-new brothers. From that day on, telling them apart had been easy.

  “I know who you are,” Pia said to Max now, as she cradled him on the edge of her parents’ bed. “Yes, I do.” She bent down and kissed Ollie’s forehead. “You too, Ollie boy.”

  Ollie smiled, chuckling around the toes in his mouth.

  Pia picked up one of their rattles and held it out for him, trying to get him to let go of his foot. Vater had carved the rattles out of wood before he left for the war, sanding them over and over until every spot was smooth and soft. He used twine threaded through holes to hold four brass bells on each side, and carved each boy’s initials on the handles. The sound they made when shook reminded Pia of sleigh bells at Christmas.

  Ollie was more interested in playing with his feet. She put the rattle down and noticed Max was falling back asleep, his long dark lashes like feathers against his pale cheeks. She rocked him in her arms and sang a lullaby in a soft voice. Ollie lay still and listened, then let go of his toes, put his thumb in his mouth, and gazed up at her with sleepy eyes. Within minutes they were both napping again. She covered Ollie with the other blanket, then stood and carefully laid Max next to him. After waiting a few seconds to make sure they’d stay asleep, she turned the knob on the oil lantern and the thick wick receded, reducing the flame. Then she tiptoed out of the room, giving them one last look before letting the door latch slip quietly back into place.